Remembering Gustavo Arcos: Eighteen Years Later

 The Cuban Revolutionary who broke with Fidel Castro and became a Human Rights Defender

 

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (1926- 2006)

On this day eighteen years ago, Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, who was 79 years old, passed away in Havana, Cuba, due to a heart attack. His birthplace was Caibarién, a small village in central Cuba. He studied diplomatic law at the University of Havana when he was a young man. However, on March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista's coup interrupted his academic career.

This is where he met Fidel Castro and later joined him on the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada military barracks. Gustavo was shot in the back, touching his spine and damaging the sciatic nerve, and left partly paralyzed by the wound suffered in the assault. [ Anita Snow reported in the Associated Press on Wednesday, May. 18, 2005 that "His sciatic nerve was damaged and has deteriorated over the years, making walking difficult, especially up the one flight of stairs from the street."]

Luis Arcos Bergnes killed in 1956

 Brother Luis killed by Fulgencio Batista's forces 
Gustavo was sentenced to ten years in prison but was pardoned and released 22 months later in 1955 and went with the rest of the group to organize a rebel army in Mexico. He traveled through Latin America and the United States gathering money and munitions. His brother Luis Arcos Bergnes was killed when the Granma expedition landed in Cuba in 1956 and were met by Batista's forces.

Gustavo Arcos was appointed Cuba's ambassador to Belgium following Castro's arrival to power in 1959. Wounded in the Moncada assault with a martyred brother, he could have easily remained a privileged member of the revolutionary elite, but that was not why he had taken up arms against Fulgencio Batista. He had fought for an end to dictatorship and the restoration of a democratic Cuba. When he returned to Cuba in 1964 he saw not only that the government had turned communist but that Fidel Castro was another dictator.  At the time Raul Castro personally offered Gustavo a position in the regime leadership. Gustavo rejected the offer. He was already disenchanted and preferred to remain in the diplomatic corps, away from Havana.Gustavo expressed his dissent privately.

"They shot a lot of people," Mr. Arcos told the Associated Press in 2005 during the summary trials held after the revolutionaries took power. "They shot people who could have easily been imprisoned." 

 On March 15, 1966 he was detained and in 1967 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. for alleged counterrevolutionary activity. He served three years in prison before being released after a long hunger strike in 1969, but was not allowed to leave the country.

Logo of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

 Joining the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

He and his younger brother, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, joined the 1976-founded Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1982 while incarcerated at the Combinado de Este. In 1981, the brothers were imprisoned for attempting to leave the country. Not long after, the Committee started issuing declarations criticizing the deplorable conditions under which political detainees were housed.

In 1986, international pressure compelled the Cuban government to grant a few concessions, including visits from several international human rights organizations and the release of several political prisoners, who subsequently carried out the Committee's activities in Havana's streets. Gustavo Arcos succeeded the committee's exiled executive director, Dr. Ricardo Bofill, shortly after his release from prison in 1988.

In 1990, Gustavo Arcos sent a message to Castro, defying the objections of many Cuban exiles, requesting that he call a "National Dialogue" that would involve all facets of Cuban society, both on the island and in exile. On January 28, 1990, Castro responded by saying that "the Cuban people" will take care of those activists during his speech to the Worker's Congress.

Sebastian Arcos's home was stormed by government-sponsored rioters on March 5, 1990. Gustavo's house was stormed on March 8 by a different mob that was led by future foreign minister Roberto Robaina. Many old acquaintances from exile persuaded Gustavo to dissolve the Committee in order to preserve the lives of the activists. Gustavo stated that "The Cuban Committee for Human Rights will continue its work, even if it costs us our own lives...no terror, nor propaganda will be able to deter the development of humanistic ideas in our country."

On January 13, 1992 the executive board of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights again issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to nonviolence and calling for dialogue:   "Violence is not and cannot be the solution to our problems... We will not tire from insisting that the only possible solution is civilized discussion of our differences. This is an appeal to Cubans for wisdom and common sense... No act of violence is justified... Let us say no to violence and learn to live in peace."

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes and Jesús Yanes Pelletier were arrested at their homes in Havana on the evening of 15 January 1992. Both Gustavo and Yanes Pelletier were released after approximately 24 hours. However, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was charged with "enemy propaganda" and "inciting rebellion," he was sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. He was transferred to Ariza Prison in  Cienfuegos Province, more than 130 miles from Havana, where Sebastian was imprisoned alongside dangerous criminals and was systematically denied medical attention. In 1993 the regime offered him a deal: Sebastian would be released immediately if he only agreed to leave the island for good. Sebastian rejected the deal, becoming the first documented case of a political prisoner choosing prison in Cuba over freedom in exile.

Brother Sebastian killed by medical neglect while arbitrarily imprisoned

After an international campaign that included his designation as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and a request by France Libertés, the organization founded by former French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, Sebastian Arcos was released in 1995. 

A few weeks after his release, Arcos was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in the rectum, for which he had previously been denied medical care in prison. After a Cuban doctor was fired from his post for treating Arcos, he traveled to Miami for further care.

In 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes testified before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Sebastian Arcos Bergnes died in Miami surrounded by relatives on December 22, 1997.

Due to his worsening health in his last years he lowered his profile and ceded much of the work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Nevertheless, he met with US Senators visiting Cuba in 2000, with former President Carter in 2002 and signed a letter in 2003 denouncing the unjust imprisonment of 75 Cuban dissidents imprisoned in the Black Cuban Spring.

As his health deteriorated in his latter years, he reduced his public presence and gave up a large portion of his work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Still, in 2000 he met with US senators traveling to Cuba, with former President Carter in 2002, and he signed a letter protesting the unfair detention of seventy-five Cuban dissidents during the March 2003 crackdown.

In the 2005, Associated Press article, Anita Snow reported that he stayed in touch with other dissidents and spoke "frequently with Oswaldo Paya, a devout fellow Roman Catholic who led a signature-gathering effort called the Varela Project, which sought a referendum asking voters if they favored civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to business ownership." The article concluded with Gustavo's concern that he would not live to see the return of democracy saying : "I do hope I will see the end of this, but I'm not sure if I will.

In response to a question regarding Gustavo Arcos' legacy that I received from the news agency EFE on August 8, 2006, I said, "It is with great sadness that Arcos will not be able to be there the day that we expect a democratic transition in Cuba. We will always remember that he was one of the founders of the Cuban dissidence, of great courage, coming from a family that sacrificed much and that fought so much against dictatorship both Fulgencio Batista's and Fidel Castro's." Also noted that he left a "strong legacy that will continue to grow" while "in these moments that a giant of the Cuban dissidence has died we have projects that he basically initiated." Compared the call in 1990 by the Arcos brothers to a national dialogue so that "all segments both inside the island and in exile could analyze the Cuban problem and have proposals for the future" with "how presently one sees, 16 years later how  Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas following that example of a national dialogue was able to elaborate a document for transition designed by Cubans in the island and the exiles, in a process of nearly three years."  I also addressed his principled stand and how he entered the dissident movement outlined above and concluded: "We are talking about a man with courage and who is an example of  non-cooperation with the Castro regime."

Michael N. Nagler, an expert in principled non-violence, has noted that nonviolence always bears fruit and leaves seeds for positive outcomes, even when it is not immediately obvious. For instance, pro-democracy activists from around the world continue to be inspired by Gustavo's tenets of nonviolence and have recalled his life and example by posting a remembrance of him on his death anniversary on X today.

#MemoriaCuba
🗓️ El 8 de agosto de 2006 muere en La Habana Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Presidente del Comité Cubano Pro Derechos Humanos (CCPDH) y de la Fundación Hispano Cubana 🇨🇺

💻 Para más información pueden visitar nuestra página: https://t.co/lSGoPpxYQ9#Efemerides pic.twitter.com/RjI0hzjdal

— Cultura Democrática (@CultDemocratica) August 8, 2024

Nonviolent resistance has a history of success in combating repression in Cuba by Regis Iglesias and John Suarez

Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared the outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006. They found that major nonviolent campaigns achieved success 53 percent of the time, compared with just under half that at 26 percent for violent resistance campaigns."

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, Regis Iglesias, and Tony Diaz Sanchez deliver petitions

Grassroots movements in Cuba have fought for liberty for decades, mobilizing Cubans to defend human rights and freedom. The July 11 nationwide protests marked a historic moment, but they did not arise from nowhere.

In November 2020, hundreds of artists mobilized outside of the Ministry of Culture in a 15-day effort to free political prisoner Denis Solís González. They demanded both his release and greater artistic freedoms.

The San Isidro Movement (MSI), an artists collective formed in 2018 to nonviolently defend artistic freedom, challenged regime officials to free their unjustly jailed compatriot. Solís González was charged with contempt for protesting an illegal search of his home by a policeman, whom he had called a coward.

Rather than accede to MSI’s demands, officials repeatedly and violently escalated repression over 15 days, but they were met with nonviolent responses that inspired hundreds of artists and intellectuals to gather outside the Ministry of Culture, bringing officials to the negotiating table for dialogue.

The San Isidro Movement’s exercise in nonviolent power led to the formation of a new movement, 27N, and increased civic resistance. The pattern continued through 2021, reaching millions of Cubans across the island with the movement's art and music — in particular the song, “Patria y Vida.” The rapper Maykel Castillo Perez (Osorbo), co-author of the song and also a member of MSI, is currently in prison and severely ill.

This is not the first time nonviolent tactics have been carried out successfully in Cuba. The Cuban Committee for Human Rights, founded in 1976, systematically documented human-rights violations, information smuggled out of Cuba to international human rights organizations, which led to the installation of a special rapporteur focused on Cuba’s human-rights situation and the Castro regime’s condemnation over a 15-year period beginning in 1991. Havana’s record was carefully scrutinized, and it was held accountable annually until 2006.

The Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), founded in 1988 to work for Cuba’s democratization, is best known for the Varela Project, a petition signed by 11,020 Cubans in May 2002 calling on the regime to guarantee international human-rights norms in law. Fidel Castro changed his constitution to prevent it from being amended that same year.

The regime responded with violence, not so much because of the number of signatures presented to the National Assembly, but because more than 120 Citizens’ Committees had been created throughout the country in the process and imprisoned most of their leaders. Despite this repression, MCL turned in an additional 14,384 signatures in October 2003.

Castro expected the March 2003 crackdown, dubbed the “Black Cuban Spring,” to be the end of the opposition. Instead, it sparked the emergence of a new movement, the Ladies in White, led by the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the men jailed. For eight years, these women lobbied, protested and marched for their loved ones’ freedom. They were successful, and the last of the men were released from prison in 2011, a nonviolent victory over the dictatorship. The Ladies in White continue to the present day, demanding human rights be respected in Cuba.

The price of nonviolent defiance has been high: long prison terms, exile, deportations and extrajudicial killings. Tempted by the understanding that Cubans are exerting power through nonviolent action, some voices have emerged advocating a turn to violence in the belief that it would expedite a democratic transition.

Strategic studies have demonstrated that the more brutal the regime, the less effective and successful violent movements are. Counterintuitively, nonviolent movements have been more successful in overthrowing brutal dictators and transitioning to lasting democracies.

The Castro dictatorship, with decades of experience in terrorism, torture and genocide around the world, is an expert in war, as demonstrated in the 1960s when it efficiently and ruthlessly crushed a violent opposition in Cuba with the aid of Soviet advisors to consolidate power.

Nonviolent resistance is better able to mobilize citizens to demand change and obtain global solidarity and sanctions, creating the political, diplomatic and economic isolation of the regime and punishing the individuals and entities that violate Cubans’ rights. 

Regis Iglesias Ramírez is spokesperson for the Movimiento Cristiano Liberación. 

John Suarez is executive director of Centro por una Cuba Libre.

Note: This article was published in The Miami Herald on Tuesday, November 30, 2021.

#11July: One week later and nonviolent resistance continues in Cuba

For freedom and justice.

On the streets of Cuba on July 11, 2021

One week later and the protests continue, despite the most brutal efforts of the Castro regime to silence Cubans on the island. It began on July 11, 2021 in San Antonio de los Baños, just South East of Havana when Cubans took to the streets in protest. Others saw it streaming live, and also took to the street in cities and towns across the country chanting "Freedom" and "Down with the dictatorship." 

President Miguel Diaz-Canel appeared on official television threatening: "They [protesters] would have to pass over our dead bodies if they want to confront the revolution, and we are willing to resort to anything."

Cuban protesters were met with extreme violence by the dictatorship, but they have continued to take to the streets to the present day. Cubans in the diaspora around the world have taken to the street in solidarity with their counterparts in the island. On July 11th,  I was outside of the Cuban Embassy in Washington DC protesting the repression of the dictatorship, and in solidarity with Cubans on the island demanding freedom.

On July 14, 2021 the Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero appeared on television and announced that the dictatorship would "temporarily lift restrictions on the quantity of food and medicine incoming travelers could bring into Cuba."

On Saturday, July 17 the regime held their official rally, and even there they could not obtain unanimity and violently dragged out an unknown protester who screamed "Freedom."

The opposition movement to the Castro regime since the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976 has been a nonviolent one, and regime brutality is an attempt to shock and outrage Cubans to embrace violence, and in turn give the regime the pretext to escalate their violence and terror against the populace.

Gene Sharp was the theoretician of nonviolent action, that thanks to Jose Basulto, in June of 1996 I was able to meet and learn from him over a series of lectures and conversations at Florida International University. This encounter marked a before and after in my life. This blog has cited him time and time again and promoted the South Florida premiere of the documentary about his life, How to Start a Revolution, back in 2011. Professor Sharp passed away on January 28, 2018 at age 90.

In 1990 at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston, Gene Sharp succinctly outlined his argument.

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

These weapons can be wielded by the average citizen to great effect, but also requires strategy and tactics to be successful.

Now is the time to double down on nonviolence. The Castro regime came into existence with the secret backing of the Soviet Union, the public backing of the United States, a U.S. arms embargo on Batista, then lies, terror, and mass murder to consolidate its rule. They have used violence and terrorism as state policy for 62 years. They are experts in the application of violence. 

To abandon the strategy and tactics of nonviolence that have put the regime on the defensive is the equivalent of deciding to abandon a chess match with a boxer when you have him checked on the board to decide the battle in the boxing ring.

This happened in Syria with Assad and on February 5, 2012 Professor Sharp summed it up succinctly: "using violence is a stupid decision."

University Academics Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth in their 2008 study "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic on Nonviolent Conflict" compared outcomes of 323 nonviolent and violent resistance campaigns from 1900 to 2006 and there study finds “that nonviolent campaigns are more likely than violent campaigns to succeed in the face of brutal repression.”

The usual counter argument is that nonviolence would not have worked against the Nazis but history says otherwise with the successful nonviolent action of the Rosenstrasse protest carried out by German wives who successfully got their Jewish husbands back from the concentration camps in 1943. Nor does one consider the scores of violent actions that failed to dislodge the Nazi regime but only consolidated their rule despite two close calls that nearly got Adolph Hitler in 1939 and 1944.

This dictatorship, I believe, has killed many this last week, and is continuing to kill Cubans and we may never have a full accounting. Thousands have been jailed or disappeared, and the oppressors responsible need to be identified and sanctioned by the international community. The Global Magnitsky Act holds torturers and kleptocrats accountable nonviolently through targeted sanctions, and needs to be applied now in Cuba. This is one of the weapons in the nonviolent arsenal described by Professor Sharp above.

Gene Sharp provides below a holistic look at how nonviolence works:

In a great variety of situations, across centuries and cultural barriers, another technique of struggle has at times been applied.  This other technique has not been based on turning the other cheek, but on the ability to be stubborn and to resist powerful opponents powerfully. Throughout human history, in a multitude of conflicts one side has fought - not by violence, but - by psychological, social, economic, or political methods, or a combination of these.  This type of conflict has been waged not only when the issues were relatively limited and the opponents relatively decent.  Many times this alter- native form of struggle has been applied when fundamental  issues have been at stake and when ruthless opponents have been willing and able to apply extreme repression.  That repression has included executions, beatings, arrests, imprisonments, and mass slaughters. Despite such repression, when the resisters have persisted in fighting with only their chosen nonviolent weapons, they have some- times triumphed. This technique is called nonviolent action or nonviolent struggle.  This is “the other ultimate sanction.”  In acute conflicts it potentially can serve as an alternative to war and other violence.

We have witnessed it in Cuba over the years with a number if initiatives. The Cuban Committee for Human Rights and its ability to document human rights abuses in the island to expose the brutality of the regime in the 1980s and 1990s to the international community. The Christian Liberation Movement in the 1990s and 2000s that through the Varela Project non-violently petitioned the Cuban government to reform and respect international human rights standards, and gathered over 25,000 signatures of Cuban citizens in the island who knew what the cost would be to say they wanted change. The San Isidro Movement formed in 2018 by artists protesting Decree 349, a further tightening of restrictions on artistic freedom in Cuba, has carried out nonviolent campaigns that on November 27, 2020 shook the dictatorship when hundreds of artists and intellectuals engaged in a non-violent intervention outside the Ministry of Culture in Havana, Cuba.

Violent resistance to the regime was tried early on by courageous Cuban men and women, but was crushed by the Castro regime with the aid of Soviet counter-insurgency forces. Today, not only the Russians are there, but so are the Chinese. 

Non-violent resistance remains the most effective option to achieve a democratic transition in Cuba, and restore Cuba's positive human rights legacy.

The documentary "A Force More Powerful" is about non-violence, and its power to change the world over the past century. It is worth noticing that faith and belief played a major role in these movements that achieved positive and lasting change. We will need a lot of both in the days, weeks, and months to come.

Exiled leader of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights dies of COVID-19 in Miami

 "I am not - nor have I ever been - of the extreme left, nor of the extreme right. I have always been parked in the center - undoubtedly the best place - gathering the good of both parties. I dream of a Cuba in which we all fit." -  Oscar Peña

Ricardo Bofill and Oscar Peña of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

Covid-19 claimed the life of Oscar Peña, a leader of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Over twitter today Cuban scholar and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner reported:

"Oscar Peña, one of the heads of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights created by Ricardo Bofill and Gustavo Arcos, has died of Covid in Miami. When he denounced the regime, they mounted several acts of repudiation. In exile he always tried to find peaceful and reasonable solutions."

It is important to revisit the founding of the Committee. On January 28, 1976 a candle was lit in Cuba and a new type of struggle for freedom initiated when Ricardo Bofill together with Marta Frayde at her home in Havana founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Carlos Alberto Montaner described how this movement came into existence during a speech in 2009 in Madrid, Spain:

Finally, in 1976, half a dozen Cuban opposition actvists with leftist backgrounds were summoned by professor Ricardo Bofill [3] and founded in Havana the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, the first political organization in the nation's history to expressly renounce violence as a method of struggle. The group decided to abide by the rule of law to reclaim the rights quashed by the dictatorship. Meanwhile, in exile in Washington, about the same time, Mrs. Elena Mederos, former minister in the revolutionary government, and activist and political scientist Frank Calzón, founded Of Human Rights with the same objective: to defend, by nonviolent and legal means, persecuted individuals, dissidents and political prisoners in Cuba.

In 1982 at the Combinado de Este prison Gustavo Arcos Bergnes and his younger brother, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. The brothers had been imprisoned in 1981 for trying to leave the country illegally. Soon thereafter, the Committee began to send out proclamations denouncing the deplorable conditions in which political prisoners were kept. 

Shortly after his release from prison in 1988, Gustavo Arcos succeeded the committee’s executive director, Dr. Ricardo Bofill, who was forced into exile.


 In 1990, against the protests of many Cuban exiles, Gustavo Arcos issued a statement to Castro asking him to convene a "National Dialogue," which would include all segments of Cuban society, on the island and in exile. During his address to the Worker's Congress on January 28, 1990, Castro issued his response noting that "the Cuban people" will take care of those activists.

On March 5, 1990 government sponsored mobs attacked Sebastian Arcos's home. On March 8 another mob, led by future Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, attacked Gustavo's home. From exile, many old friends asked Gustavo to dissolve the Committee to save the activists' lives. Gustavo replied: "The Cuban Committee for Human Rights will continue its work, even if it costs us our own lives...no terror, nor propaganda will be able to deter the development of humanistic ideas in our country."

Logo of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

On January 13, 1992 the executive board of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights again issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to nonviolence and calling for dialogue:   "Violence is not and cannot be the solution to our problems... We will not tire from insisting that the only possible solution is civilized discussion of our differences. This is an appeal to Cubans for wisdom and common sense... No act of violence is justified... Let us say no to violence and learn to live in peace."

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes and Jesús Yanes Pelletier were arrested at their homes in Havana on the evening of 15 January 1992. Both Gustavo and Yanes Pelletier were released after approximately 24 hours. However, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was charged with "enemy propaganda" and "inciting rebellion," he was sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. He was transferred to Ariza Prison in  Cienfuegos Province,  more than 130 miles from Havana, where Sebastian was imprisoned alongside dangerous criminals and was systematically denied medical attention. In 1993 the regime offered him a deal: Sebastian would be released immediately if he only agreed to leave the island for good. Sebastian rejected the deal, becoming the first documented case of a political prisoner choosing prison in Cuba over freedom in exile.

Martha Frayde

 After an international campaign that included his designation as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and a request by France Libertés, the organization founded by former French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, Sebastian Arcos was released in 1995. A few weeks after his release, Arcos was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in the rectum, for which he had previously been denied medical care in prison. After a Cuban doctor was fired from his post for treating Arcos, he traveled to Miami for further care.

Sebastian Arcos Bergnes

In 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes testified before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Sebastian Arcos Bergnes died in Miami surrounded by relatives on December 22, 1997.

Due to his worsening health in his last years Gustavo Arcos lowered his profile and ceded much of the work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Nevertheless, he met with US Senators visiting Cuba in 2000, with former President Carter in 2002 and signed a letter in 2003 denouncing the unjust imprisonment of 75 Cuban dissidents imprisoned in the Black Cuban Spring.

In the 2005, Associated Press article, Anita Snow reported that he stayed in touch with other dissidents and spoke "frequently with Oswaldo Paya, a devout fellow Roman Catholic who led a signature-gathering effort called the Varela Project, which sought a referendum asking voters if they favored civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to business ownership." The article concluded with Gustavo's concern that he would not live to see the return of democracy saying : "I do hope I will see the end of this, but I'm not sure if I will.

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes

Gustavo Arcos passed away in Cuba on August 6, 2006. Martha Frayde passed away in Spain on December 4, 2013. Ricardo Bofill remained in exile in Miami, Florida and an active member of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights until his death on July 12, 2019.

This nonviolent approach would endure and grow into a nationwide movement across Cuba and write new chapters in Cuba's history of resistance to tyranny.

The struggle for a free Cuba has been a long affair with different episodes and different approaches.
Between 1959 and 1966 there had been a violent resistance to the Castro regime that carried out armed landings (1961); guerilla uprisings (1961 - 1966) that according to Carlos Alberto Montaner "lasted until approximately 1966, when the last foci of peasant guerrillas on the central mountains were exterminated." 

Many of the participants in the Anti-Castro armed struggle had first been members of Castro's July 26th Movement, who had fought in good faith to rid Cuba of the Batista regime with the aim of a democratic restoration. 

These Cubans returned to fight in the hills when it became obvious that the Castro brothers were imposing another and more brutal dictatorship.

Some of them ended up joining the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and continued the struggle using nonviolent means.

Oscar Peña

 Others like Oscar had believed, but grown disillusioned with the crude brutality of the regime.

Sebastián Arcos Cazabón considers that Oscar Peña was "another of the good guys who didn't make it to see a free Cuba." Speaking to Martí Noticias, Arcos described his colleague as someone with a constant imagination. "He represented a generation that initially got on the bandwagon of the Revolution and then realized that it was a trap."

Ricardo Bofill, President of the organization that initiated the civic movement during 

the first exposition of dissident art, shortly before an assault by repressive forces

 

Dr. Ricardo Bofill, founder of the Cuban human rights movement. Requiescat in Pace

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas." - Dr. Ricardo Bofill, 1987 in "Nobody Listened" documentary

Dr. Ricardo Bofill in a PBS documentary in 2005

The founder of the human rights movement in Cuba just passed away in Miami. Ricardo Bofill co-founded the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1976, dedicated his entire life to and suffered years in Cuban prisons for defending human rights.

This blog has celebrated the work of Dr. Bofill over the years and will do so again today. His story and legacy changed the course of a nation, and the outcome is still playing out today. The 400th blog on this site was dedicated to him.

Honrar honra.Ricardo Bofill, una referencia ineludible en la defensa de los DD.HH. de los cubanos. pic.twitter.com/IwCGlPsxtt

— regis iglesias (@maverick18mcl) December 10, 2014

On December 10, 2014 Regis Regis Iglesias, spokesperson of the Christian Liberation Movement at 1:40pm posted a picture of Ricardo Bofill over twitter with the text: "Honoring honor. Ricardo Bofill, an essential reference in the defense of Human Rights of Cubans." He was and remains correct in his assessment of this man.

Ricardo Bofill, President of the organization that initiated the civic movement during 

the first exposition of dissident art, shortly before an assault by repressive forces

In the 1987 documentary Nobody Listened, directed by Néstor Almendros and Jorge Ulla the world was introduced to Ricardo Bofill and the nonviolent human rights movement on the big screen.  Dr. Bofill is interviewed and discusses his circumstances as a dissident in Cuba engaged in the battle of ideas:

"I can't understand the hatred towards me. Because, really in the only field I’ve done battle, is the field of ideas. In this field I’ve had no response just prison and the police. And I don’t know why because the revolution controls all mass media. They have editorials, journalists, even many writers in the world. I don’t know why the response, time and again, has been jail. The response should come in the field I fight in, with ideas. I was arrested again in 1983. On that occasion, I was sentenced to 17 years in jail accused of activities in the Cuban Committee for Human Rights and the last period of prison began. For reasons of health and others I know not of in 1985 I was placed in the status I’m now in which is “conditional liberty with restriction of movement.”

Fidel Castro was asked the name of the human rights defender in another interview. The Cuban dictator dismisses his importance, but it is obvious in the context of his answer that he knows very well who this lone activist is, and views him as a threat.

Dr. Ricardo Bofill in the documentary Nobody Listened in 1987

Why do they view Bofill's movement as an existential threat? The Castro dictatorship's ideology and revolution are based in violence and blood shed. The July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada Barracks is a failure not only in the short term defeat suffered by Castro's forces but in the long term degradation of Cuban society and the abandonment of dialogue, moral and ethical restraints in favor of a cult of violence nurtured by a dictatorship now in its 60th year in power. 

Even the men responsible for doing this now complain about the society their revolution has created.They blame Cubans for their poor behavior and customs. Of course men and women with sound moral groundings who speak clearly what they believe and defend human dignity and freedom have an unfortunate tendency to die under suspicious circumstances in Cuba.

There are two traditions battling for control in Cuba. One tradition, embodied by the Castro regime, based on violence and the destruction of the other has dominated Cuba's political discourse for over half a century. It views dissent as treason and demands unanimity; the only acceptable ideas belong to the dictatorship. 

The second, an older tradition that built the institutions of Cuban democracy in the 19th Century using nonviolent means, who founded companies with a social conscience such as Bacardi, that contributed to the common good until forced out of their homeland, and of the democrats who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 are still there in Cuba's nonviolent civic resistance movement.

This is the movement founded by Ricardo Bofill and a handful of activists on January 28, 1976 that today is  a nationwide movement of thousands who are nonviolently engaged in the battle of ideas and the defense of human rights. Today's repression across the island continues to demonstrate that the Castro regime is terrified of what Ricardo Bofill started.

In an open letter written in 1986 Dr. Bofill rejected regime slanders and staked out their position as a movment: "We have nothing to do with the CIA, we do not participate in violent acts, we have no other weapon than the word, and we are going to use it while we have a breath of life left."

In 1988 he was forced out of the country by the dictatorship, but continued his human rights work from exile in Miami, while Gustavo Arcos remained and continued to do the work in Cuba.

Dr. Bofill meets President Reagan in The White House in 1988

It is a long and frustrating struggle to achieve the freedom of a country in the grip of totalitarian rule. One must neither over estimate or underestimate what has been achieved and what remains to be done. This is a marathon, not a sprint that requires persistence and faith, not despair. Dr. Bofill told me that 28 years ago and it still holds true today.

This is what he did, and Dr. Ricardo Bofill's legacy will live on in Cuba and in the end will triumph over the forces of brute force and tyranny.

Requiescat in pace.

The Cuban resistance to communism

"They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, Havana, Cuba 2010

“Already many Cubans have discovered and soon all of them will discover that this oppression, that this imposed lie, can be overcome recognizing ourselves as brothers to conquer our rights peacefully. So there is hope.” - Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas,  Somos Liberación Havana, Cuba, July  2012.

Castro lied his way into power because he knew that Cubans rejected and despised communism and that showing his Marxist Leninist colors would lead him nowhere. He came to power publicly claiming to be a democratic humanist who respected human rights and freedom of expression but privately sent his agents to warn newspaper editors that if they spoke critically of him or the revolution they would be killed. While talking democracy the firing squads were filmed and broadcast and the terror began.



Those who had fought by his side in good faith believing it was a struggle to restore democracy became uneasy with the course of the revolution. Some, like Huber Matos, who spoke out spent decades in prison. Many returned to the hills of the Escambray to carry on the struggle for the democratic restoration. This violent resistance was finally crushed in 1966.



In 1976 within the prisons a new and nonviolent movement emerged with the founding of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. This movement would emerge with an international projection that also reached millions of Cubans in the 1980s with the founding of Radio Marti. Different groups began to emerge.

Oswaldo Payá delivers first batch of petitions in 2002

In 1988 the Christian Liberation Movement was founded in Havana in the neighborhood of El Cerro by Catholic laymen. Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas was the first leader of this movement that in 2002 would express the desire of millions of Cubans to be free with a petition drive called the Varela Project. Over 25,000 Cubans would sign the petition and have their signatures confirmed and turned into the rubber stamp National Assembly of Peoples Power, but the response of the Castro regime was to declare the constitution unchangeable and in March of 2003 to round up many of the organizers of the petition drive, along with other human rights activists and independent journalists in a crackdown that became known as the Black Cuban Spring.

Ladies in White led by Laura Pollán marching for freedom

In the midst of this wave of repression a new movement arose. The wives, sisters, daughters and mothers of these activists formed the Ladies in White. Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a former school teacher, was the first leader of this movement. Sunday after Sunday braving violent repression from the agents of the Castro regime these women marched with white gladiolas in their hands demanding the freedom of their loved ones.

Beaten by regime agents in December 2012. Needed nearly 30 stitches

Both Oswaldo Payá and Laura Pollán died under suspicious circumstances during the normalization drive of the Obama Administration with the Castro regime. Laura Pollán died of purposeful medical neglect while under the custody of state security on October 14, 2011. Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, youth leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, were killed in an "accident" staged by state security on July 22, 2012.

The Castro regime's brutality continues today. Sirley Ávila León was a delegate to the Municipal Assembly of People’s Power in Cuba from June 2005, for the rural area of Limones until 2012 when the regime gerrymandered her district out of existence. The Castro regime removed her from her position because she had fought to reopen a school in her district, but been ignored by official channels and had reached out to international media. Her son, Yoerlis Peña Ávila, who had an 18 year distinguished career in the Cuban military was forced out when he refused to declare his mother insane and have her committed to a psychiatric facility.


Sirley joined the ranks of the democratic opposition and repression against her increased dramatically. On May 24, 2015 she was the victim of a brutal machete attack carried out by Osmany Carriòn, with the complicit assistance of his wife, that led to the loss of her left hand, right upper arm nearly severed, and knees slashed into leaving her crippled. Following the attack she did not receive adequate medical care and was told quietly by medical doctors in Cuba that if she wanted to get better that she would need to leave the country.

The nonviolent resistance to the Castro regime continues today in Cuba and the struggle for freedom continues.

Third part of October 26, 2017 lecture sponsored by the Young Conservatives of Texas held in the Escondido Theater of the Student Union Building at Texas Tech University. The talk was entitled 'How Communism Arrived in Cuba.

Remembering Gustavo Arcos: Ten Years Later

The Cuban Revolutionary who broke with Fidel Castro and became a Human Rights Defender 

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes (1926- 2006)

Ten years ago today Gustavo Arcos Bergnes passed away in Havana, Cuba at the age of 79 from a heart attack. He was originally from a small town in central Cuba called Caibarién. As a young men he attended the University of Havana and studied diplomatic law. However, his studies were abruptly interrupted by Fulgencio Batista's coup on March 10, 1952. This is where he met Fidel Castro and later joined him on the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada military barracks. Gustavo was shot in the back, touching his spine and damaging the sciatic nerve, and left partly paralyzed by the wound suffered in the assault. [ Anita Snow reported in the Associated Press on Wednesday, May. 18, 2005 that "His sciatic nerve was damaged and has deteriorated over the years, making walking difficult, especially up the one flight of stairs from the street."]

Luis Arcos Bergnes killed in 1956

Brother Luis killed by Fulgencio Batista's forces 
Gustavo was sentenced to ten years in prison but was pardoned and released 22 months later in 1955 and went with the rest of the group to organize a rebel army in Mexico. He traveled through Latin America and the United States gathering money and munitions. His brother Luis Arcos Bergnes was killed when the Granma expedition landed in Cuba in 1956 and were met by Batista's forces.

Gustavo Arcos was appointed Cuba's ambassador to Belgium following Castro's arrival to power in 1959. Wounded in the Moncada assault with a martyred brother, he could have easily remained a privileged member of the revolutionary elite, but that was not why he had taken up arms against Fulgencio Batista. He had fought for an end to dictatorship and the restoration of a democratic Cuba. When he returned to Cuba in 1964 he saw not only that the government had turned communist but that Fidel Castro was another dictator.  At the time Raul Castro personally offered Gustavo a position in the regime leadership. Gustavo rejected the offer. He was already disenchanted and preferred to remain in the diplomatic corps, away from Havana.Gustavo expressed his dissent privately.

"They shot a lot of people," Mr. Arcos told the Associated Press in 2005 during the summary trials held after the revolutionaries took power. "They shot people who could have easily been imprisoned." 

 On March 15, 1966 he was detained and in 1967 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. for alleged counterrevolutionary activity. He served three years in prison before being released after a long hunger strike in 1969, but was not allowed to leave the country.

Logo of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights

 Joining the Cuban Committee for Human Rights
In 1982 at the Combinado de Este prison he and his younger brother, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes, joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights, formed in 1976. The brothers had been imprisoned in 1981 for trying to leave the country illegally. Soon thereafter, the Committee began to send out proclamations denouncing the deplorable conditions in which political prisoners were kept. By 1986, due to international pressure, the Cuban government was forced to allow a few concessions such as visits by several international human rights organizations and the release of several prisoners, who then extended the work of the Committee to the streets of Havana. Shortly after his release from prison in 1988, Gustavo Arcos succeeded the committee’s executive director, Dr. Ricardo Bofill, who was forced into exile.

In 1990, against the protests of many Cuban exiles, Gustavo Arcos issued a statement to Castro asking him to convene a "National Dialogue," which would include all segments of Cuban society, on the island and in exile. During his address to the Worker's Congress on January 28, 1990, Castro issued his response noting that "the Cuban people" will take care of those activists.

On March 5, 1990 government sponsored mobs attacked Sebastian Arcos's home. On March 8 another mob, led by future Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, attacked Gustavo's home. From exile, many old friends asked Gustavo to dissolve the Committee to save the activists' lives. Gustavo replied: "The Cuban Committee for Human Rights will continue its work, even if it costs us our own lives...no terror, nor propaganda will be able to deter the development of humanistic ideas in our country."

On January 13, 1992 the executive board of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights again issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to nonviolence and calling for dialogue:   "Violence is not and cannot be the solution to our problems... We will not tire from insisting that the only possible solution is civilized discussion of our differences. This is an appeal to Cubans for wisdom and common sense... No act of violence is justified... Let us say no to violence and learn to live in peace."

Gustavo Arcos Bergnes, Sebastián Arcos Bergnes and Jesús Yanes Pelletier were arrested at their homes in Havana on the evening of 15 January 1992. Both Gustavo and Yanes Pelletier were released after approximately 24 hours. However, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes was charged with "enemy propaganda" and "inciting rebellion," he was sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. He was transferred to Ariza Prison in  Cienfuegos Province,  more than 130 miles from Havana, where Sebastian was imprisoned alongside dangerous criminals and was systematically denied medical attention. In 1993 the regime offered him a deal: Sebastian would be released immediately if he only agreed to leave the island for good. Sebastian rejected the deal, becoming the first documented case of a political prisoner choosing prison in Cuba over freedom in exile.

Sebastian Arcos Bergnes: Death by medical neglect

Brother Sebastian killed by medical neglect while arbitrarily imprisoned
After an international campaign that included his designation as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and a request by France Libertés, the organization founded by former French first lady Danielle Mitterrand, Sebastian Arcos was released in 1995. A few weeks after his release, Arcos was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in the rectum, for which he had previously been denied medical care in prison. After a Cuban doctor was fired from his post for treating Arcos, he traveled to Miami for further care.

In 1996, Sebastian Arcos Bergnes testified before the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland. Sebastian Arcos Bergnes died in Miami surrounded by relatives on December 22, 1997.

Due to his worsening health in his last years he lowered his profile and ceded much of the work to exiled members of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. Nevertheless, he met with US Senators visiting Cuba in 2000, with former President Carter in 2002 and signed a letter in 2003 denouncing the unjust imprisonment of 75 Cuban dissidents imprisoned in the Black Cuban Spring.

In the 2005, Associated Press article, Anita Snow reported that he stayed in touch with other dissidents and spoke "frequently with Oswaldo Paya, a devout fellow Roman Catholic who led a signature-gathering effort called the Varela Project, which sought a referendum asking voters if they favored civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to business ownership." The article concluded with Gustavo's concern that he would not live to see the return of democracy saying : "I do hope I will see the end of this, but I'm not sure if I will.

When the news agency EFE called me on August 8, 2006 and asked me about the legacy of Gustavo Arcos I responded: "It is with great sadness that Arcos will not be able to be there the day that we expect a democratic transition in Cuba. We will always remember that he was one of the founders of the Cuban dissidence, of great courage, coming from a family that sacrificed much and that fought so much against dictatorship both Fulgencio Batista's and Fidel Castro's." Also made the observation that he left a "strong legacy that will continue to grow" while "in these moments that a giant of the Cuban dissidence has died we have projects that he basically initiated." Compared the call in 1990 by the Arcos brothers to a national dialogue so that "all segments both inside the island and in exile could analyze the Cuban problem and have proposals for the future" with "how presently one sees, 16 years later how  Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas following that example of a national dialogue was able to elaborate a document for transition designed by Cubans in the island and the exiles, in a process of nearly three years."  I also addressed his principled stand and how he entered the dissident movement outlined above and concluded: "We are talking about a man with courage and who is an example of  non-cooperation with the Castro regime."

 Michael N. Nagler, an expert in principled non-violence has observed that nonviolence always works because even when it is not immediately self-evident it leaves seeds and fruits that are always positive.